Memories
by msfcatlover
Summary: He gave up his life, his body, his humanity. But his memories he clung to. Wheatley-centric, heavy on the angst, lil' bit of Chelley at the end. Cyborg!Wheatley.


More cyborg!Wheatley for you lovely folks. Slightly different history, but the same basic character as the cyborg!Wheaters I use in Hundred.

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><p>He remembered most of what happened after they installed the tech, but the drugs they'd given him beforehand fuzzed the past. He did all sorts of little things to remember: hiding a photo of his family in his new living quarters, sending them letters, forcefully upbeat and cheerful, making excuses about the holidays. He called on his little brother's birthday and nearly burst into tears on the phone. He forced himself to keep calling.<p>

They couldn't see him now.

They'd never know what he did to put food on the table, to send them to school, to keep them in the bloody country. They'd never see the plugs in his back, or the wires under his skin, like thin black veins, or the thick, dimpled scars where his natural skin met the synthetic stuff They'd made to hide the prosthetics beneath. They'd never see the Aperture logo, tattooed to the left of the barcode on the back of his neck.

He told them how much he hated his job, and the contract that bound him to it. He told them about made-up experiments he was helping with, and absorbed their assertions that they _never_ wanted to work there. And he thanked God that they were only half joking.

The scientists shared him, shuffling him from one department to the next. Today he was a medical experiment, choking down some new anti-aging pill, yesterday he'd been in product testing, tomorrow he might be doing something with AIs, letting them upload some virus into his head to see if they could make him act different. Those were the ones that frightened him the most, when he went into the room one person and spent most of the day as someone else entirely. It would take _hours_ to wear off; it was almost as bad as the time they wanted to mess with his memories (in his opinion, they'd done enough of _that_ already.)

He didn't know when he stopped thinking of himself as human. Maybe it was when they rewired his sweat glands so that they didn't work and installed a coolant-thing instead. Maybe it was after one of their viruses wiped his mind clean for a week. Maybe it was when he missed his mother's funeral, and no one would pick up the phone. After two years of getting the cold shoulder, he left a choked-up message explaining that he wouldn't call anymore if they weren't going to pick up. He then forced himself to stay true to his word, though he still sent cards for the holidays and their birthdays.

Yes, that was probably it. Being denied direct contact with the most important thing in one's life can have a pretty dramatic effect on the mind.

He remembered when they tried to attach him to Her. All he'd ever say about it was that it was the only time he was glad for the filtered respirator they'd replaced his lungs with. Watching everyone else in a room drop like flies can do that to a person. It didn't help the part of him that so desperately wished it was still human.

He came to hate the scientists. And from that came an extended feeling that humanity itself was essentially worthless. The tiny piece in the back of his mind was horrified, but as the return letters became less frequent, and the experiments more painful, it couldn't fight the effects. He still cared about humans, like his brothers and sisters, somewhere out there on the surface, but couldn't see much point to them.

That was when They began seriously looking at him. The forced-cheerfulness he bore every day faded into pensive silence, and got him more than one odd look from the scientists. They moved him into testing anti-depressants, emotion-simulators and minor brain alterations.

They got the effects they wanted, for once, but nearly everything from before the last three years disappeared into a fog. He kept the picture, but couldn't remember the dates to write on, or how old his siblings were. He couldn't remember a time when his limbs didn't ache from the wire-to-nerve connections, or his breath didn't reek of coolant, or he maybe, possibly somewhere back there, had a light tan. He couldn't remember and, though it worried him, he decided not to think about it. Not thinking about things was something he could do well most of the time, and an organic construct like him could pull through, right?

The small, human corner, threw up its hands in disgust and seemed to curl up and vanish.

He remembered when They put him on the rail, gave him an actual job (beyond guinea pig.) The wires had _snick_ed in with a strange, serrated feeling. They'd told him that he'd die if he removed them, and he had no reason to believe otherwise. After all, anything that entered your flesh with barbs built in couldn't be good.

Then She took over, and he hid in the depths of the Relaxation Center, his one safe refuge from Her.

As he watched the scientists die, and everywhere outside of the Testing Tracks deteriorate, and eventually, heard about Her death, he realized just how well those anti-aging things had worked. Something in that medical cocktail they'd poured into him had left his internal clock beyond out-of-whack. It had been at least twenty-five years, but, aside from a few worry-lines, he couldn't have aged more than two. He was pleased that he'd last as long as his fellow machines, despite being organic-based, though he did feel a yank of despair at the thought of how far he'd outlive everyone who'd ever mattered to him. It passed fairly quickly.

Then he spent God-knows-how-long trundling about the Relaxation Center. Then, the first five humans. Scientists, civilians, even a child: they wouldn't listen to him, or disappeared within the Testing Tracks. He doubted he'd ever see any of them again, which is why he tried again.

And met _her._

At first, he'd assumed the jumping was a matter of brain damage, but later, sprawled out on the floor, she'd taken his face in her hands and studied it. The jumpsuit around her waist labeled her as an _actual Test Subject_, and the scars on her arms spoke not only of turrets and lasers and bad falls, but also of needles and razors and stitches, things he could relate to. He wondered if she'd ever seen anything resembling a human face besides her own, and that was why she took such an interest in his.

She couldn't tell him, though. Brain damage, or possibly the scientists, had rendered her mute.

She was her own kind of cheerful, quiet, smiling, not hurried, but always moving forward. His own bright chatter and rambling speeches seemed to fit perfectly into the space between them. Her quick, precise movements left him wondering if humans were really as useless as all that, or if he'd just met the pick of the lot. She was even branded, marking her something that, like him, was never, _ever_ to set foot outside of Aperture.

She made his mostly-organic heart jump about in the strangest ways, made him blush for the first time in his memory…even his respirator kicked it up a few notches. Something about her reminded him of what it was to be fully and truly himself. Something in her made him wish, for the first time in decades, to be human again.

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><p>I am please with how this came out. Please Read and Review~<p> 


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